I know there are two words here: 老鼠 and 鼠. However, the dictionary states that 老鼠 (rat) can also mean mouse; how do you specify rat?
I imagine that 仓鼠 (hamster) and 沙鼠 (gerbil) are often abbreviated ...

I've seen 介绍, 简介 and 导语 in news pieces, which labels a one sentence synopsis of the article. Is there any difference between these three? 介绍, 简介 look to be interchangeable, and used commonly like 介绍 ...

In modern Chinese 之 is thought of as the literary genitive particle and 的 as the colloquial. In most reconstructions of Old Chinese 之 looks very similar to the way 的 is pronounced now. For example in ...

I'm having a little trouble with learning directions and positions. It seems that most often the word bian is being used to indicate a position: front side 前邊, back side 後邊, etc.
But then I see stuff ...

There seem to be two words for each season. Each pair has the first character in common but for the second character one will have 季 (jì) and the other will have 冬天 (tiān).
For example "winter" is:
...

I'm used to using 每 for every. However, 各 came up one day and appears to me to have the exactly same meaning. Is there a contextual difference between the two that I am missing or can they be swapped ...

I would imagine that 山火 meant "a fire in the mountains", but the dictionary lists "wildfire / forest fire".
Is 山火 then a generic word for an out of control fire? What about 野火? I saw 山火 on the news, ...

What words should we use when we want to say "a webpage is loading"?
In Gmail, when I change my settings to simplified Chinese, Google says "正在加载".
However, when I change my settings to traditional ...

It seems like both 为 and 是 mean "to be". In which cases is one used but not the other? Is it something like the difference between "estar" and "ser" in Spanish and Portuguese? (In the sense that one ...